Buses instead of Trains

February 28, 2014 by kris de decker Filed Under: Public transport, Trains

california rail newsThe latest issue (PDF, page 4/5) of California Rail News talks about our article on high-speed trains, and adds some interesting information:

The French National Railway (SNCF) has started a fleet of buses to replace international express trains. iDBUS, a brand allied with its low-cost iDTGV now occupies the Paris-Amsterdam, Paris-Brussels, Paris-London, Lyon-Milano and Lyon-Barcelona routes, offering 9 to 45 euro trips to those who have been priced off Thalys, Eurostar and trains now selling for up to 180 euro.

About 25 percent of the traffic is former overnight train trips, and the rest daytime runs with fares only a few euros cheaper than trains. Concurrently, the international expresses that used to serve Prague from Zurich, München, Frankfurt and Stuttgart also vanished, replaced by Nürnberg-Prague buses in Deutsche Bahn colors labeled IC Bus.

California Rail News editor Richard Tolmach also sent us a news article that does not bode well for the future of high speed rail travel in France:

France’s economic conditions mean passengers aren’t willing to pay up the money for the most expensive high speed rail routes.

Recording a net loss of 180 million euros in 2013 and effectively reversing the 376 million euro profit of the previous year is down to the 1.4 billion euro writedown of the high speed long distance train network value.

SNCF said that TGV “is not sufficiently profitable to cover the carrying amount of its fleet and its renewal.”

– See more at: http://www.totalrail.org/2014/02/17/frances-high-speed-rail-network-loses-2-billion-value/#sthash.IjguUGdE.dpuf

France’s economic conditions mean passengers aren’t willing to pay up the money for the most expensive high speed rail routes. Recording a net loss of 180 million euros in 2013 and effectively reversing the 376 million euro profit of the previous year is down to the 1.4 billion euro writedown of the high speed long distance train network value. SNCF said that TGV “is not sufficiently profitable to cover the carrying amount of its fleet and its renewal”.

Previously: High Speed Trains are Killing the European Railway Network.

Low-Tech Kite-Fishing in the Indo-Pacific

February 9, 2014 by kris de decker Filed Under: Fishing gear, History, Kites, Random

kite fishing 1908

“We set out to sea but kept close to the canoe occupied by the two fishermen. Off the island the old fisherman gradually played out the kite. As it swung in the breeze we noticed that the webbing just had enough length so that it touched the surface of the sea with every soft fall of the canoe as it rose and dipped. Presently there was an agitation in the sea behind the canoe and we could see several fish coming to the surface. Apparently intrigued by the tantalizing touching of the surface by the webbing, the fish were jumping for it. Finally one caught the webbing in his mounth and with a shout, the old fisherman neatly hooked it in with a hand net.”

Picture: Kite-Fishing off Pitilu (Admiralty Islands) as photographed in 1908 by H. Vogel of the Hamburg Südsee Expedition.

[Read more…]

Frugal Digital: Repairing, Hacking, and Repurposing Electronics

February 7, 2014 by kris de decker Filed Under: DIY, Random

Frugal Digital Repairing, Hacking, and Repurposing Electronics

Frugal Digital is a project that focuses on creating digital solutions in low resource settings like that of developing countries:

“Silicon technology is mostly about a culture of excess. It’s about the fastest, and the most efficient, and the most dazzling gadget you can have, while about two-thirds of the world can hardly reach the most basic of this technology to even address fundamental needs in life—including health, education, and all these kinds of very fundamental issues.”

“We work on projects to set the framework, create tools and provide inspiration for frugal innovators around the globe. Frugality is a way of thinking that optimizes given resources, up-cycles and has the spirit of improvisation. We aim to apply frugality to digital life and create solutions that are inexpensive, adaptable, use available resources and create valuable knowledge along with new solutions.”

Working with local tinkerers, Frugal Digital already made some interesting machines, mixing parts from different objects. A low-cost cell phone became the heart of a multi-media projector for education, while an alarm clock was rebuilt as an easy diagnostic tool to improve healthcare. Their community radio station introduces “air tweets”.

Via iFixit, who brings more good news for digital tinkerers: there is absolutely no shortage of disposed electronics.

A Logographic Script for Europe

January 2, 2014 by kris de decker Filed Under: Books, Language, Media, Random, Writing

Like Europe, China has many languages ​​and cultures. In contrast to Europe, everyone in China communicate with each other through a common script: Hanzi. A text drawn up in Chinese characters for every literate Chinese to understand, even if they don’t share a common language. Europe has tried to forge unity through a common currency, the market, regulation and parliament. These elements have so far not delivered a broad common identity. Europe is separated by language.

logographic script for europe

Babel is a project initiated by Monnik and Studio Rooiejas in which they design and develop a logographic script for Europe. With a logographic writing we could read (and write) each other’s newspapers even if we can not understand each other. A design solution through which one could instantly create a truly European public space. In a logographic writing each word or concept is represented by a separate symbol, called a logogram. Because these characters have a symbolic and not a phonetic value they can be used universally, even by people who do not speak each other’s languages.

A logographic language as a solution to Europe’s “confusion of tongues” sounds far-fetched and obvious at the same time. It would be practical if it existed, completely impractical to implement, and most of all insightful and evocative food for thought.

See and read more at Monnik and Flickr.

Why Facebook Subscribers Stopped Seeing Updates

January 1, 2014 by kris de decker Filed Under: Access to information

facebook buttonFacebook now expects page-owners like Low-tech Magazine to pay in order to show updates to all their subscribers. We don’t plan to do this — except we have to do it for this post or almost nobody will read it.

If you are a FB-subscriber and you want be informed of new articles, there are two options:

Update: Since some people have asked for it, here is some more information about what happened precisely. Facebook still shows updates to about 10% of our subscribers. Until some weeks ago, each update was viewed by an average of 5,000 people, since then this has become an average of 500 people. This is in line with the observations by other page owners. The change has nothing to do with declining popularity: the new posts are not less popular than the ones before (which we can easily check by dividing views by likes and shares).

Facebook does what it wants, of course, but as a news consumer I don’t see the value of a news medium that selects news articles based on what publishers are willling to pay.

The Elderly in Modern Society

December 29, 2013 by kris de decker Filed Under: Human population, Random

Elderly people in the United States today are not treated with the respect and reverence to which they were accustomed earlier in history. The gerontologist David Hackett Fischer notes that literature from seventeenth and eighteenth century colonial America stressed deference and respect for the elderly. He maintains that the elderly were held in veneration, a word which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means a “feeling of deep respect and reverence,” and is derived from the Latin root veneror, meaning “to regard with religious awe and reverence.”

elderly in modern societyThe elderly today are hardly regarded with religious awe or reverence. They have become virtual outcasts of society, many living on the fringe, often in retirement communities or in nursing homes.

William Withers states that “modern cultures have coped with the death of the aged, minimizing its disruptiveness, by disengaging the elderly from the vital functions of society”. In modern society, emphasis and value are placed on youth, with advertising geared toward and glamorizing the young. To the extent that advertising acknowledges the elderly individual at all, it attempts to make him or her appear younger (Atchley).

The elderly are victims of mistaken beliefs and irrational attitudes promulgated by society, largely through the various mass media. Atchley defines ageism, or age prejudice, as “a dislike of aging and older people based on the belief that aging makes people unattractive, unintelligent, asexual, unemployable, and senile” and claims that research indicates that most Americans subscribe to at least a mild form of ageism.

Quoted from: The elderly in modern society, Alan Pope. Engraving: State Library of Victoria. Related: Temporocentrism.